The present government, which will not prosecute so expensive and useless an undertaking, will still have to make compensation to the owners of the buildings of which only the ruins remain.

The quarter of St. Antoine is celebrated in the annals of the Revolution; and, indeed, there are but few parts of Paris, which do not recall to one’s mind some of those scenes so disgraceful to humanity of which it was the great theatre.  The Place Royale in this district is only remarkable, for having been built by Henry IV.:  it forms a square with a small garden in the centre, but has long ceased to be a fashionable residence.  In Paris there are no squares similar in plan to those in London, but occasionally one sees places formed by the junction of streets, &c.  The town-house is a large, and as I think, a tasteless Gothic edifice; and in the Place de Greve stood that guillotine which deprived such incredible multitudes of their lives.  At one period of the Revolution every successful faction in turn, endeavoured, as it should seem, to exterminate its enemies, when it succeeded in possessing itself of the supreme power, which then chiefly consisted in the command of this formidable instrument; and these successive tyrants, like Sylla, were often in doubt whom they should permit still to remain alive.

I do not know that the invention of the guillotine, is to be ascribed to the ingenuity of the French, but they will for ever remain obnoxious to the charge of the most dreadful abuse of it.  I have heard it stated that, so late as the reigns of Elizabeth, and James the First, an instrument similar to the guillotine, was used for the execution of offenders in the vicinity of Hardwicke Forest, in Yorkshire.

The Boulevards are now merely very spacious streets, with avenues of trees at the sides, but formerly they were the boundaries of the city.  They form a fashionable promenade for the Parisians, and abound with horsemen and carriages more than any other quarter of the town.  Along the Boulevard Poissonnier are some of the handsomest houses in Paris.  I dined with a family in one of them which commands a very cheerful scene.  There are here, as in the Palais Royal, a vast number of coffee-houses, billiard-tables, and restaurateurs.  The price of a dinner differs little from what is usually paid in London, but bread is about half the price, and there is a great saving in the charge for wine, with this additional advantage, that it is generally of much better quality than can be met with in London for double the price; as the heavy duties on importing French wines necessarily induces their adulteration.  A stranger to French manners, is surprised at seeing ladies of respectability frequenting coffee-houses and taverns, which they do as matter of course;—­so powerful are the habits in which we have been educated.

After the Boulevards, the Rue Royale and the Rue de Rivoli are the handsomest in Paris.  The last named is far from being completed, and runs in a line, facing the gardens of the Tuilleries; in these two streets there is a division to protect foot passengers, but they are not flagged.